It isn’t often you find anybody so eager to celebate turning 80, but that’s the way it was with good neighbor Margaret Kruse on Sunday in the pack-jammed banquet room at Irons in the Fire restaurant at the muni golf links.

Margaret doesn’t actually turn 80 until this Sunday, but she set up her birthday party a week early for a very good reason. She was so determined to have Larry Fresch, the great jazz sax stylist and “Just A Gigolo” Louis Prima singalike, and his Fresch Expression combo lead the five-hour concert and celebration of “eight decades of music and laughter” that she fudged on the date.

Larry has long been booked for an event this weekend in Michigan, hence the seven-day jump start so it could all come together as she dreamed.

And so it did. Whatta party, whatta turnout – the jam including her two daughters, a son and five of six granddaughters. The one who didn’t make it was momentarily detained on her way to the hospital to have a baby. If it turns out to be a great-grandson, he’ll no doubt have to be named Larry.

Fresch was at his all-time freshest, singing and playing them all through the decades, and those who who came out of the crowd to also sing and do some of their favorite numbers included Barbara Tancredi, Marilyn Dumford, Jerry Velasco and Shep Shepherd, the wondrous 92-year-old warbler and trombone artist.

When a 92-year-old can sing and play a bone like Shep does, what’s the problem for the members of the “mere” 80 club?

That’s the way Margaret felt anyway as she danced all through the party and personally took over as emcee and introduced everybody in the house during dinner.

I happened to draw one of the most popular tables by chance because Ralph Tancredi sat down next to me. A steady stream of well-wishers came up to hug and kiss him and tell him how much they’d been missing him. He’s had to put down his fantastic trumpet that he played so beautifully through the years, including a featured stint with the Freddie Martin orchestra during the good old Cocoanut Grove days at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, because of his battle with Parkinson’s.

During one of the brief lulls, Ralph and Tonneta (alias Toni) compared notes on their Italian heritage, and he had wife Barbara go to their car and bring back a CD for us featuring some classic hits with all the vocals in Italian – “Lasciatemi Cantare Che Sono Un Italiano.” Like “Anima E Core” (“Heart and Soul”) and “Mala Femenina” (“Bad Woman”). I’ll get back to your later with a few more translations.

We also got a gift CD titled “Remember Me” that features both Ralph and Barbara, who plays about a dozen instruments as well as outlark a lark on vocals, doing such as “You Made Me Love You,” “The Summer Knows” and “All Of Me.”

I already have Shep’s CD that he did with Sy Olivar in 1961 (“I Can Get It For You Wholesale”) featuring the music from the Broadway play that first put Barbra Streisand on the map. Yes, right, whatta birthday party.

We were able to sneak in because Margaret is one of our neighbors on Avenida Ramona, part of the family that invented and runs the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. I’ve always wondered why a San Clemente family doesn’t have one of its hot spots in San Clemente … but that’s another story.

Hard news, too, at the birthday party. Velasco, the longtime all-time poet of the piano, has left Adele’s at the San Clemente Inn and is considering moving his forever fan club to Hapa J’s or the Blue Danube in Old City Plaza.

Meanwhile, happy birthday No. 80, Margaret. Why don’t we do it all over again this Sunday on the real date?

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